


Strength of Memory

by mahoni



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1000-5000 Words, Angst, Gen, episode-related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-26
Updated: 2007-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahoni/pseuds/mahoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has a lot of memories of his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strength of Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Scene from the season 1 episode "Home."

Sam was in his house. He didn't remember it, of course; he'd been a baby last time he was there, and Dean said it didn't look like it had when they lived in it anyway. There was nothing about it that was familiar to him. Or, almost nothing. Sam knew that the killing spirit wasn't his mother, but the burning one was. Pinned to the wall by invisible hands, pain ringing in his head and Dean trying to bust down the door, he watched the spirit enter the room, and she was familiar. He remembered her.

Sam had a lot of memories of his mother. He'd made them all up, but he'd done it so long ago, when he was really little and it was easy to believe in made-up things. He had memorized his mother's face from the picture his dad kept in his wallet, and then spent hours and hours with his eyes closed, taking in scents and sounds and events and putting her into them. He did it so much that at some point, believing what he imagined was true was a habit.

Once when they stopped in a town in Wyoming and his dad enrolled them in school there, Sam decided he didn't want to deal with the funny looks and annoying questions he always got when people found out his mom was dead. So he pretended his mom was alive. He told all of his new friends about her, told them the things he had already imagined about her and then made up some more. He liked some of the things he made up that time, on the fly, so much that he ended up keeping them as real memories too.

Dean had found out about the things he told the kids and said Sam shouldn't tell people things like that that weren't true. Sam told him that his memories _were_ true, that they were real because they were the only ones he had, because Dean and dad never told him anything about mom for him to remember instead. Dean got really mad about it. They ended up on the ground in the back yard, Dean sitting on his back shoving his face into the dirt and yelling at him to never, ever tell lies about their mom again.

When Sam got older, and started to hate his life, and his father's life, and the way his dad and his brother lived that stupid life like it was the only one there could ever be, he hated those stupid made up memories, too. He never had a mom, and pretend memories wouldn't change that.

He couldn't quite get rid of them, though. Even when he was at Stanford far away from his life and family, he caught himself remembering. His roommate would open a care package from home and find a bag full of gooey chocolate chip cookies, and Sam would have a flash of memory, of standing in the kitchen with his mother and watching her take cookies out of the oven. He would have to remind himself that it had really been a bakery, and he had peeked through a door by the bathrooms, and the woman taking cookies out of the oven had been broad and old and scowling.

Another time, when Jess found out she'd aced a term paper she was sure she'd bombed and started twirling around their living room, spinning in and out of the rays of sunlight streaming through the windows, Sam remembered, with a sick turn of his stomach, spinning in circles with his mom in a sunny park. He knew it had been him alone; Dean had been there, but he'd been sprawled in the grass, ignoring his goofy little brother, smiling at the giggling, blushing girls who were watching them. But he could still see his mom so clearly in his mind, her long hair streaming behind her; he could feel her hands wrapped around his.

That was the only memory of his mother he'd ever been able to get rid of, actually, because as he sat there remembering, right in front of him was the real thing. A radiant young woman, smiling and laughing and _real_. Jess had tackled him, where he sat on the couch, and kissed him. The horrible twist in his gut disappeared as soon as he kissed her back, and the old memory faded and flattened to something like an old photograph. He put it away, far back in his mind and forgot it. That was when he had decided that he had to marry the unbelievable, perfect girl in his arms. Later, after Jess died, he wasn't sure which made him feel worse, the memory that never happened, or the one that had.

Now, though, as his mother moved toward him, engulfed in flames like the night she had died, it didn't matter how stupid his memories were, how fake, or how awful he felt when they pushed their way into his thoughts. Didn't matter because there, right _there_, was his mother.

His first memory ever, the first of anything he remembered beyond the fact that Dean had always, always been there and was the only one who ever had, was of being in the world's ugliest trailer home. Everything in the place was shades of purple, and old, and the woman who lived there was drab and tired, though she meant it when she smiled.

He had had the flu. His dad wasn't there, so when he threw up all over himself in the sleeping bag on the floor, that woman took care of him. He could never remember her name, but she had smelled of lavender. She shushed his crying, said let's not wake Dean, hey Sammy? Let's get you cleaned up, okay, baby? and was gentle, and so kind, and Sam remembered he had loved her.

When he was all clean she wrapped him up in her bathrobe, worn white terrycloth dotted with little purple flowers, and tucked him into her bed. He'd felt miserable, but warm and safe and cared for. He fell asleep in the robe, under a pile of blankets, and when he closed his eyes suddenly the woman who pressed the cool, damp cloth on his forehead was mommy, his mommy, his real actual one.

That memory was how he knew that the apparition coming toward him was his mother. He was afraid, and hurting, and he sensed the murderous hatred of the poltergeist focused down on him, but as she moved nearer he also felt safe. He felt warm and cared for. It was exactly like being wrapped up in that lavender-scented bathrobe, with gentle hands on his face and a soft voice all around him.

Then Dean was there, between Sam and the spirit, aiming the gun. Sam flinched, tried to lunge forward and shove down the barrel, but the poltergeist tightened its grip.

"No," he said, "Don't, don't!"

And Dean, thank god, hesitated instead of firing. "What? Why?"

"Because I know who it is," Sam said, and through the blaze she smiled. "I can see her now," he said.

As the darkness swallowed up the flames and suddenly his beautiful mother -- his real actual one -- stood before them, Sam gazed at her, struck silent, and thought, _I have so many memories of you_.

*


End file.
